NO SWEAT, HARD-FI BACK AND FINALLY ENJOYING THE RIDE

STAINES finest Hard-Fi are gearing up for their first album in 15 years, but struggling to adapt to a world obsessed with screens.

- With JAMES CABOOTER

The band explored the plight of a disaffected generation living under surveillance on classic LP, Stars Of CCTV.Years later that anxiety has transferred to phones and Hard-Fi's latest single, They Ain't Your Friends laments social media's fakery.

Frontman Richard Archer says: "The world has changed in how you do things since we last put out an album.

"There's this feeling of 'you've got to be on the socials, you've got to have content'.

"A friend with a band I know had loads of followers, but then no one would turn up to their gigs and you were sort of going, well how much of this is real?

"What's real, what isn't, who's genuinely got your back and who hasn't?

"Even more so with AI, do you even know if you're watching a real person talking to a real person? There's a bit of feeling lost amongst this whole orgy of numbers and whether it actually means anything."